If you have not heard before, "ageism" is an American term that refers to stereotypes and discrimination against individuals, based on their age. This can happen accidentally or systematically. 

Ageism is a global phenomenon and experts believe it works as a means by which we can vent our fear of losing someone, making age their "problem" and not our problem. 

Older people are a target of the anxiety and insecurity we feel about what is life's ultimate existential dilemma - that it is sure to end. We blame older people for this troublesome truth, projecting on them an inner anger that each of us carries to a greater or lesser degree, as a way of keeping within ourselves the "unsolvable problem." that one day, we too will disappear.

In a 1972 article in The Gerontologist, JH Bunzel coined the term "gerontophobia," defining it as "the unreasonable fear and hatred of the elderly." In 1980, the concept was expanded:

Gerontophobia seems to occur, first of all, because most young people will one day be older, and secondly, because old age is associated with death.

In a study that same year, two fellow psychologists, Robert Kastenbaum and Bernice Neugarten, argued that Americans generally had "an irrational fear of aging and, as a result, maintained a psychological distance from the elderly." 

Is gerontophobia curable? Lawrence Samuel, PhD, psychologist, thinks yes. Embracing the completely natural process of aging represents our greatest opportunity to heal ourselves from the prevalent condition everywhere in society, gerontophoia, which without realizing it, seriously damages millions of lives every day. Let’s start today, treating the elderly as neither less nor more than the rest.

Source: Psychology Today